by Greg Barth
“Welcome home, Selena,” he said.
F ORTY-ONE
Selena
“I CAME ALL this way, Magnus. All this way, just to see you.”
“You broke out of prison for me?”
“Technically I broke out of a van. But still, you have no idea what I went through to get here.”
“You’re looking good. Still a child of the beast, I see.”
“Thank you. You look like shit.”
Magnus chuckled.
“So what’s going on in the barn? My man in there?”
He shook his head. “To tell the truth, I don’t know what’s going on in there. Kind of quiet now. I don’t think it went well for your friend, though. It sounded like my boy Roman’s .38 going off. Don’t know why he fired so many shots. Could be your man gave him a heap of trouble.” Magnus worked his tobacco with his teeth and spat. “Whichever one of us gets to go in and check it out will know the answer.”
I pulled the nightstick from my belt. I held it in my left hand. I had the long extension running up my forearm. I could use it to block with if needed. The short end extended from my fist. I could punch with that and it would extend my reach.
I took the palm knife from my belt with my right hand.
“So this is how it’s going to be?” Magnus said.
“It’s what I came for,” I said.
“You want to hurt me?”
“I do.”
Magnus opened a leather pouch on his side and extracted what looked to me like a long piece of chain with a leather-wrapped wooden handle. The chain connected to the handle by some type of swivel. He dropped the length of the chain. There was a heavy, metallic dart on the opposite end that fell by his foot.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I fucked your mom?” Magnus said.
“If this is the part where you try to tell me you’re my father, and I should come over to your side, combine our strength, don’t bother. I saw that movie too. It didn’t end well for the bad guy.”
“Your pretty mom. I did. I fucked her. You want to hear about it?”
I stepped to one side, away from the hand that held the chain whip. I didn’t comment. He could dangle all the bait he wanted. I wasn’t going to let him inside my head.
“I paid your dad, oh, I think it was twenty-five dollars to fuck her. Yeah. Twenty-five it was.”
He raised his hand to shoulder height, his elbow bent at his side. He spread his feet and rocked back and forth, bouncing lightly at his knees. The chain spun in an overhand arc.
“Probably the best twenty-five dollars I ever spent. She knew what to do to a man, that woman did.”
I moved more to the side away from the chain. I raised the baton at the ready to block in case he swung the chain at me.
“Your mom. She moaned like a whore when I stuck it to her.”
He took steps to the side.
I moved away from him.
We moved like that, circling each other. The chain spun faster with each step he took. I kept the nightstick up, the knife low by my side.
“’Course your daddy charged me seventy-five dollars to fuck you. He said you was a virgin.”
He flipped the chain around the back of his neck and changed the direction of the spin. The chain gained speed from the move.
“Seventy-five. You believe that? Talk about a ripoff. I shoulda got my money back on that deal.”
He flipped the chain back and forth through a series of changes. I couldn’t keep track of the whirling dart at the end of the chain.
“You weren’t no virgin.” He spat. “You weren’t worth no seventy-five. Your momma was a better lay than you.”
He took a step toward me. He flipped the chain around under his arm and changed the direction again. It spun forward toward me in an overhand arc. He took another step and flipped the chain around to come at me from the other side.
I studied his moves. One thing was clear. I had to get up close to use my weapons. His chain was designed to keep me at a distance. If I stayed back, he had the advantage. To get in close, I’d have to take a hit from the chain. But once I was up next to him, what could he do with it?
He spat tobacco juice again.
“Now look at you. You’re just some used up little twat. Not worth shit now. Probably have to pay seventy-five just to get some guy to even look at you.”
The question was, could I take the hit? I’d been shot in the chest by a man that knew how to shoot. I’d been hit in the face by just about everything. The chain moved fast. The dart looked heavy and sharp. No getting around me taking a hit from it. I’d have to take my chances with his twirly chain.
“Is that all you think about?” I said. “Pussy?”
He raised his foot. I thought he was going to kick me. Instead he kicked down hard on the chain. His foot caught it mid-length as it was spinning down. The chain snapped and the dart thrust straight at me. It hit me hard right in the center of my chest.
My breast bone exploded in pain. It took my breath, but my chest was used to feeling pain. Ragus had fired his bullets into me, and I’d gone through the surgery and healing process that left it hurting long afterward.
The pain was bad, but it didn’t shock me. Instead, I walked right into it. I walked through it. I left the pain behind me. I came in close to him and threw an uppercut into his gut. The knife pierced his hard stomach. I felt his skin close around it and the warm wash of his blood against my knuckles.
I brought the short end of the stick up and clipped him under the chin with it.
He shoved me back away from him. I kept my feet under me.
He stepped back and started the chain whip spinning again. The blood spread down his red plaid shirt.
My chest throbbed with each heartbeat, but I got the sense that I’d hurt him in a worse way.
“Is that really all you’ve got, Magnus? I’m disappointed. You putting me and my mother down as women? And your little yo-yo toy there? I expected so much more from you.”
He went into a frenzy. The chain spun in a blur. He stepped forward. He executed so many changes, I couldn’t keep up. The chain was like a living thing moving around him. The silver links buzzed like a swarm of knives. He moved at me.
I had no way to defend myself against something moving so fast. Again, I simply raised the baton and walked into it. If he didn’t hit me in the head, I felt I could take at least one more blow.
My left arm in front, raised high, I ran at him. The chain caught my forearm and wrapped around it. He pulled, tried to tug the stick free from my grip, but he had my arm bound by the chain.
As he jerked me forward, I let my body go with the momentum. I stumbled toward him. I collided with him. He smelled of sour sweat. I punched savagely at his sternum. The palm knife dotted and dashed at his midsection like Morse code. He grunted hard with each punch. Blood soaked the front of him.
He punched my jaw.
I slashed at his stomach.
He tried pushing me away again, but I kept punching.
He got one hand in my face and shoved me back hard. I went with it, but I sliced at his forearm as I went.
I backed away from him. He was bleeding badly.
I freed my arm from the chain wrapped around it.
Blood dripped from his forearm. It soaked the hand holding the handle of the chain whip. He pressed his other hand against his bleeding stomach.
“Any other insults you want to get off your chest before I kill you?” I said.
He leaned forward. He spat. His face was pale and he was having a hard time catching his breath. “Just... just give me a second,” he said.
I stepped toward him. “Fuck you,” I said.
He backed away. “No,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
I kept coming. I spun the nightstick so that I held it by the straight handle, the long length of it down by my side.
“Selena...” He stumbled as he backed up. He tripped and fell to the ground on his ass.
I was on him. I hit
him over the head with the stick. I slashed at his face with the palm knife. I felt the blade glance off his cheekbone and skitter along his teeth. His jaw opened in a long red gash. His wad of tobacco rolled out through the gaping wound like a bloody tumor.
“Jesus...” I said. It was a disgusting sight.
I jumped into him. My knees hit him in the chest, and he went down on his back.
I straddled him. The warm blood from his abdomen soaked through the crotch of my pants.
His hands came up. One of them caught my wrist as I tried to press the knife down at his throat. His other hand clawed at my face.
I swung the nightstick down trying to hit his head, but I couldn’t connect a solid blow.
He pressed his thumb into my eye, and I twisted my face away from his hand. He caught a fistful of my long hair and twisted it.
I looked down into his eyes. His face was ashen. Blood soaked through his long beard and pooled under his head.
He tried to speak. He had a hard time forming words. His jaw had been slashed open. His mouth filled with blood. “Please, Selena. Don’t do this.” Droplets of blood flew up from his mouth as he spoke. “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”
I stopped pushing. He relaxed his arm under me. I dropped the nightstick. I put my left hand behind my right. I pushed the knife forward using both hands. He was much stronger than me, but his strength was fading as the blood drained from him.
I could feel the warm slick blood from his stomach under my crotch squish as he tried to pull his head away from me.”
Inch by inch the knife pressed closer to his neck.
I know where the carotid artery is.
“No,” he choked. “No.”
The point of the knife bit into the side of his neck. First there was a tiny drop of blood as the blade pricked his skin, then a trickle ran down through his beard as the blade pierced deeper. When the blade was in far enough, I slashed sideways. The trickle became a weak spurt as the knife severed the artery.
His grip on my hair loosened as the light faded from his eyes.
F ORTY-TWO
Selena
I FOUND RAGUS in the barn. He lay in a clump at the foot of a support post. He was naked. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or unconscious. His hair had fallen across his face. A pistol was on the ground next to him.
I walked over to the pit where Ragus lay. There was a man’s body on the upper level. He’d been shot through the head. Another dead man’s body was down in the pit. Looked as though he’d suffered some severe trauma to one eye.
Something about Ragus’s posture bothered me. The pistol nearby didn’t help. He had never struck me as the suicidal type, but I had no idea how bad his night had been.
I took the stairs down into the pit. I heard a strange buzzing sound by my side. I looked over. There was a wooden trunk next to the steps that sounded like a rattlesnake was inside. Another buzz, then another. I kept my distance from the box as I went down the last couple of steps.
I walked over to him. His hands were cuffed. I checked the waistband of my underwear and found the key was still there. I hoped these keys were universal. I took his hands and shifted them around so I could get the key in the lock.
It fit. I turned the key and the cuffs loosened.
I moved his hair from his eyes and checked his pulse. There was a thick leather collar around his neck, but I could fit my fingertips up next to his jaw and feel for the artery. His neck was bruised along his jawline.
I felt a strong, healthy thump under my finger. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I saw a steel cable was attached to the collar. It extended up to a machine high up on the pole. The machine was busted, but the steel cable was still attached. I tugged at it. A pulley fell from the machine and hit the ground next to me, but the cable wouldn’t come free from the contraption overhead.
Now how to get the damned collar off? I reached around behind and tugged at it.
His eyes opened. He grabbed me by my wrists. “Don’t,” he said in a coarse whisper.
“I gotta get you free, baby.”
He shook his head. “The collar has explosives inside. Get something to cut the cable instead.”
I tried using the knife, but it was too light to cut the cable.
“Find an ax. Something heavy.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry. There are more of them.”
“I will.”
I followed the path back to the house. The blue tick hound had a rear leg hiked on the front tire of the police cruiser. I didn’t blame him. I wanted to piss on something too. He followed me as I walked around the outside of the house. There was a rick of cordwood covered with a tarp, but no ax nearby. I saw a shed, but a heavy gray padlock secured the door.
I went up the steps to the porch and looked around. No ax.
I checked the front doorknob—unlocked. I opened the door and stepped inside. I had no idea if anyone else was in the house or not. By my mental math, least one man was still unaccounted for who’d been in my father’s trailer the night before. I didn’t trust my math skills enough to have any confidence that it was just one. I’d seen another house farther down from the barn. This place could be crawling with people soon.
I went through the front den then into the kitchen. A young woman sat at the table drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. She had natural blonde hair that fell straight down past her shoulders. She wore a t-shirt and a pair of yellow cotton underwear.
“Hello,” she said.
“Um, hi,” I said.
“You a friend of Magnus?”
“Not really. No. Are you?”
She shook her head. “No.” I saw fear in her eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Natalie Catlow.”
“Selena Carson,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
“That deputy’s here, ain’t he?”
“Do you want to go home, Natalie?”
“No.”
“But do you want to get away from him?”
“Magnus?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. I do.” Tears streamed down her face.
“Can you help me? I have a friend. He has an explosive collar around his neck. I don’t know how to get it off.”
“There’s a tool. But Roman has it. I could show you, if you could get it from him.”
“What does Roman look like?”
She described him.
“I can get the tool,” I said. “Roman’s dead. Magnus is dead. The deputy is dead. Some other guy is dead too. Shit, I don’t know. Some guys from last night, they’re dead. Me and you are about all that’s left.”
“Good,” she said.
“Are there other girls here? Like you?”
She nodded. “Downstairs in the basement,” she said. “Two others. He don’t let them run loose yet.”
All that I’d gone through began to feel worth it.
F ORTY-THREE
Selena
I GAVE THE girls Magnus’s pickup. They dropped Ragus and me off at our car. Ragus told them how to find him if they ever needed help.
“They won’t be working for you,” I said.
Ragus scoffed. “I’m in the whore business. The consenting adult business. I’m not into human trafficking.”
“That’s a fine distinction,” I said.
“You have to draw the line somewhere.”
“You may want to brush up on where the legislators draw the line on that one.”
“I believe in a free country. I don’t force people to do anything they don’t want to do.” He paused and thought for a few seconds. “At least not when it comes to the whore business, I don’t.”
I laughed.
We had clothes in the trunk of the car. He got dressed and I changed into something less bloody.
We put the miles behind us. There were no roadblocks, no one stopped us. It was as though nothing had happened.
“There’s somewhere I
need to go,” I said.
“No,” Ragus said with a firm voice. “No more family reunions. No more revenge. We’re done with that.”
“Harding,” I said. “He put me through hell. You have no idea how bad it was.”
“No. Let it go. We don’t go after federal prosecutors. They’re the good guys. You beat him in the game. You’re the winner. That’s good enough. That’s it.”
He was right of course. I let it drop.
“Now we do my thing,” he said.
We rode in silence. We would get out of Virginia and find a place to hole up and rest. Ragus needed it. He didn’t say it, but I could tell.
“You want to talk about it?” I said.
“Talk about what?”
“I’ve been through some stuff too, you know.”
“Look, Selena. Just because I’m now an official, card-carrying member of the hillbilly ass-rape bondage club doesn’t mean I’m going to get in touch with my emotional feelings about it. Got it?”
“It’s okay, you know. It’s not your fault.”
“Don’t start that.”
“You didn’t do anything to bring this on yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m just fucking with you. What do you know about bondage anyway? You and your little exploding necklace. Give me a break. Honey, I spent a solid month in leg-irons.”
“You still hate me, don’t you?”
“We got something in common. You think you’re the only one around here that’s been ass raped?”
He stared at me. “It’s worse if you’re a man.”
My eyes widened. “The fuck it is. Let me tell you something, and don’t you ever forget it. The way a man feels about not wanting to be raped? How bad that thought is? It’s the exact same for a woman. The exact same. You think we enjoy that? Good fucking god, man, if you really believe that, then we have nothing in common.”
“It’s very fucking hard to be your friend, you know?”
I looked at him with lowered eyelids. I pursed my lips together. “I hate you so much.” One side of my lips curled into a smile.
“I hate you too. With all my heart,” he said. At that moment, I knew what those words really meant. There’s no English equivalent, but I knew.